Report: Thin laptops hard to recycle

28/08/2012

The Electronics TakeBack Coalition released a report saying that ultrabooks, the common name for very thin, light laptops with a solid state hard drive, are often built with a nonremovable battery, making them more difficult to recycle or reuse later.According to the report, the Sony Vaio T13 and Hewlett-Packard Elite Book Folio 9470 are the only ultrabooks on the market that have batteries that can be removed by the user. Many ultrabooks, including those produced by Apple, Dell and Samsung require the manufacturer to replace the battery.“If we are serious about wanting to extend the life of these products, then it should be as easy to replace their batteries as it is to replace the batteries in a flashlight,” said Kathleen Goldstein, executive director of the group.In addition, the report says the manufacturers need to be open about the fact the batteries cannot be replaced by the consumer.